Page 89 of A Column of Fire

The response thrilled him. Every village sent half a dozen lads. They were keen to go. The makeshift weapons, and the young men carrying them, were not much needed in the fields in November. And Protestantism was an urban movement: it had never taken hold in the conservative countryside. Besides, this was the most exciting thing that had happened in living memory. Everyone was talking about it. Beardless boys and old men wept that they were not wanted.

The army could not remain many days at New Castle, and anyway it was a long march to Hatfield, so they set off, even though they had not heard back from Cardinal Pole. Their route would take them through Kingsbridge, where they would receive the blessing of Bishop Julius.

Swithin rode at the head of the column, with Bart at his side and Rollo behind. They reached Kingsbridge on the third day. Entering the city, they were stopped at Merthin’s Bridge by Rollo’s father, Sir Reginald, who was the mayor. He was accompanied by the aldermen of the borough.

‘I’m sorry,’ Reginald said to Swithin. ‘There’s a difficulty.’

Rollo eased his horse forward so that he was at the front with Swithin and Bart. ‘What on earth is the matter?’ he said.

His father seemed in despair. ‘If you will dismount and come with me, I’ll show you,’ he said.

Swithin said irascibly: ‘This is a poor way to welcome a holy crusade!’

‘I know,’ said Reginald. ‘Believe me, I am mortified. But come and look.’

The three leaders got off their horses. Swithin summoned the captains, gave them money, and told them to get barrels of beer sent over from the Slaughterhouse tavern to keep the men happy.

Reginald led them across the double bridge into the city, and up the main street to the market square.

There they saw an astonishing sight.

The market stalls were closed, the temporary structures having been removed, and the square had been cleared. Forty or fifty stout tree trunks, all six or eight inches in diameter, had been firmly planted in the hard winter earth. Several hundred young men stood around the stakes, and Rollo saw, with increasing astonishment, that all of them had wooden swords and shields.

It was an army in training.

As they watched, a leader performed a demonstration on a raised stage, attacking the stake with wooden sword and shield, using right and left arms alternately in a rhythm that – Rollo could imagine – would have been effective on the battlefield. When the demonstration was over, all the others tried to imitate his actions, taking it in turns.

Rollo recalled seeing similar exercises in Oxford, when Queen Mary Tudor had been preparing to send an English army to France to support the Spanish war. The stakes were called pells. They were firmly seated and difficult to knock over. At first, he remembered, untrained men’s swings were so wild that they sometimes missed the pell entirely. They quickly learned to aim carefully and hit harder. He had heard military men say that a few afternoons of pell practice could turn a hopeless yokel into a halfway dangerous soldier.

Rollo saw Dan Cobley among the trainees, and the last piece of the puzzle fell into place.

This was a Protestant army.

They would not call themselves that, of course. They would claim to be preparing to resist a Spanish invasion, perhaps. Sir Reginald and Bishop Julius would not have believed them, but what could they do? The dozen or so men of the city watch could not arrest and jail several hundred, even if the trainees had been breaking the law, which they probably were not.

Rollo watched in despair as the young men attacked the pells, rapidly becoming more focussed and effective. ‘This is not a coincidence,’ he said. ‘They heard of the approach of our army, and mustered their own to obstruct us.’

Reginald said: ‘Earl Swithin, if your army enters the town, there will be a pitched battle in the streets.’

‘My strong-armed village lads will smash these puny city Protestants.’

‘The aldermen will not admit your men.’

‘Overrule the cowards,’ Swithin said.

‘I don’t have the right. And they have said they will arrest me if I try.’

‘Let them. We’ll get you out of jail.’

Bart said: ‘We’ll have to fight our way across that damn bridge.’

‘We can do that,’ Swithin blustered.

‘We’d lose a lot of men.’

‘That’s what they’re for.’

‘But then who would we take to Hatfield?’